The New York Times is reporting this weekend that top Chinese Communist
dictator Wen Jiabao’s family has amassed $2.7 billion in the last few years.
For more than two decades, the dictatorship has freed large segments of the Chinese economy, working wonders for the material well-being of millions of Chinese. The partial economic freedom has created a middle class and certainly a new upper class in that nation. But the totalitarian rulers have been sure to take a large cut of the free-market profits.
China remains a slave state with ruthless masters at the helm. The population knows their unelected rulers have stolen their political freedoms. But thanks to tyranny's darkness, the Chinese people can’t find out how much of their hard-earned wealth has been siphoned to the despots.
Frank Warner
This news is about five months old. Please don't write about issues you are ignorant about. Have you lived in china? Do you speak mandarin? I suppose all non western countries are "slave states". Attitudes like this are the reason the us is the worlds most hated nation by far. China has found numerous allies throughout Africa and the Middle East who are tired of being disrespected. It's becoming increasing laughable these days when western countries lecture from the moral high ground. Giving yourself the Nobel peace prize doesn't give you the authority to lecture china when your continent is on the verge of ruins, in the case of Europe. With all of America's economic and social issues maybe we should take a lesson from china and mind our business.
Posted by: Andrew ling | November 04, 2012 at 03:31 PM
Just saw a trailer for the new red dawn movie which reminded me of franks post. Are you arming yourself in preparation for a Chinese invasion? I guess this is a consequence of us primary schools ranking right below Thailand internationally. No wonder Eduardo Saverin paid about one hundred million in unrealized cap gains just to renounce his us citizenship and move to Singapore.
Posted by: Andrew ling | November 04, 2012 at 04:11 PM
Andrew ling, give us your enlightened knowledge on just how rich the Wen Jiabo family is. Is China a "People's Republic" or is it the property of elitists within the political system?
The answer is pretty obvious. Corruption is worse than ever. People feel they can't get ahead without political connections. The wealth gap continues to get bigger and there has been virtually no political reform at all. Because of this, China is reaching a breaking point.
What can't last forever, won't.
Posted by: George | November 06, 2012 at 08:00 AM
***What can't last forever, won't.***
Sounds like the modern West to me, too. Read Mr Warner's own blog, "Mounting debt sends civilization towards a death spiral". (I'm not defending the CCP, by the way.) And don't get me started on PEAK OIL.
China's premodern civilization lasted several millennia, being perfectly capable of producing all forms of high culture over this whole stretch of time. Compare modern Western industrial civilization, which now already totters on the brink of an abyss after barely two centuries -- and what's more, threatens to bring everyone along with it when it finally goes.
I LOVE the West. I sure do.
Posted by: SomeoneInAsia | December 29, 2012 at 10:45 AM
China has freed up some of its economy in the last 20 or 30 years. It should free its people.
Meanwhile, the West's current problems are the result of the same ignorant thinking that gave China poverty and mass death for more than three decades, and continues to deny the Chinese people the right to speak their minds and choose their own leaders.
We have to hope no nation again goes as far as China to imprison and torture its people and make progress impossible.
Posted by: Frank Warner | January 01, 2013 at 01:42 AM